Jacob Bigeleisen, American Chemist, educator. Achievements include research in photochemistry in rigid media, semiquinones, cryogenics, chemistry of isotopes, quantum statistics of gases, liquids and solids. Recipient Nuclear award American Chemical Society, 1958, Gilbert N. Lewis lecturer, 1963, E.O. Lawrence award, 1964, Distinguished Alumnus award Washington StateU., 1983; John Simon Guggenheim fellow, 1974-1975.
Background
Bigeleisen was born on May 2, 1919, in Paterson, New Jersey. His mother wanted him to go to college and a friend suggested that he study chemistry, noting that Paterson's dye companies that served the textile plants there would always need chemists.
Education
He attended the University College of New York University in the Bronx, earned a master's degree in 1941 from Washington State University and was awarded a doctorate in 1943 from the University of California, Berkeley.
Career
While the method of using photochemistry that Bigeleisen used as an approach was not successful in isolating useful quantities of uranium-235 for the war effort, it did lead to the development of isotope chemistry, which takes advantage of the ways that different isotopes of an element interact to form chemical bonds. Manhattan Project
The method of photochemistry that Bigeleisen researched did not lead to an effective method of separating the uranium isotopes, and gaseous diffusion and methods that took advantage of the electromagnetic properties of uranium proved to be more effective means of isotope separation. Chemists can gain a better understanding of a chemical reaction by using different isotopes to analyze the differing reaction rates, which has allowed for advances in chemical physics, geochemistry and molecular biology.
Bigeleisen developed the basic theories of the effect of isotopic substitution on chemical equilibrium and on reaction rates (kinetic isotope effect). Research he did in collaboration with Harold Urey that studied the varying levels of isotopes of oxygen in marine fossils allowed for the determination of the water temperature that prevailed while the animals were alive. He did research at Ohio State University and the University of Chicago after the war.
He was hired in 1948 by the Brookhaven National Laboratory, before moving to the University of Rochester in 1968 and to the State University at Stony Brook in 1978. In 1974, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. In an address in March 1983 at Washington State University at ceremonies where he was awarded the college's Distinguished Alumni Award, Bigeleisen advocated on behalf of nuclear disarmament, saying that "we have to stop putting our efforts into building more and more bombs" and that the time had come to start dismantling the tens of thousands of nuclear warheads in the nation's stockpile.
While saying that he didn't regret his participation in the Manhattan Project. he said that "having lived through that time, that any further use of nuclear weapons is out of the question". Death
Bigeleisen died at age 91 on August 7, 2010, in Arlington, Virginia due to pulmonary disease.
Achievements
Membership
Trustee Sayville Jewish Center, 1954—1968. Fellow: American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Academy Arts and Science, American Chemical Society (Nuclear award 1958), American Physical Society. Member: National Academy of Sciences (councilor 1982-1985), Phi Lambda Upsilon, Sigma Xi, Phi Beta Kappa.
Connections
Married Grace Alice Simon, October 21, 1945. Children: David M., Ira S., Paul E.
Recipient Gilbert N. Lewis lecturer, 1963, E. O. Lawrence award, 1964, Distinguished Alumnus award, Washington State University, 1983, Meliora award, University Rochester, 1978. Fellow John Simon Guggenheim, 1974-1975.
Recipient Gilbert N. Lewis lecturer, 1963, E. O. Lawrence award, 1964, Distinguished Alumnus award, Washington State University, 1983, Meliora award, University Rochester, 1978. Fellow John Simon Guggenheim, 1974-1975.